After a week away in rainy Derby I return with something that is a must for anyone who aspires to be a writer, and of interest to anyone who enjoys a good story:

The New Yorker Fiction Podcast

This is a monthly podcast presented by the New Yorker’s fiction editor where, every week, a writer is invited to read and discuss a short story which they admire. So not only is it a free short audio book, but it’s a light critical analysis of the story. The value of this for any writer of fiction speaks for itself, since the constant advice to budding writers, after ‘write as much as you can’ is ‘read as much as you can’. And outside of quality anthologies, which are relatively scarce, it can be hard to find really good professional short stories, on the web or anywhere else, so it’s great that there’s a place where they can not only be picked out for you, but read to you.

Since the benefits of a free audio story and discussion are so immediately obvious, there’s really nothing more I can say about it, except go there now and download some. Hopefully by the time you get back, I’ll have some new original content on here. (Also, I’m not done updating the aesthetics of the site, I’ve just been busy and it takes time).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 at 4:19 pm and is filed under Miscellany. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.